Paying the price

      It's the swinging single life -- freedom, excitement, adventure.
      That's the airbrushed image anyway.
      But Don Homel, a recently divorced computer expert in Philadelphia, found that being single again isn't all it's cracked up to be.
      Homel is one of 65 million single Americans, and he's feeling discriminated against.
      "I recently received a letter from a dance school," Homel says. "It cost $50 per person for a couple to receive dance lessons, but for singles it's $55. Every place singles go, we're charged more."
      Homel is especially peeved at insurance companies that charge less for automobile coverage if there are two cars in a family.
      And there are the cruise ships that charge a "single supplement," a higher rate for those who are traveling alone.
      Homel was planning a trip to Jamaica recently, but "it's going to cost me more than if I went with someone else," he says.
      So Homel, who frequently travels to Las Vegas for computer conventions, joined Singles Clubs On Line, an organization for singles that, as part of a group, will help him obtain lower rates on insurance and cruises. He's been touting the group through the media.
      "The purpose of the association is that, combined, we're a larger organization than individually," Homel says. "It's the answer to discrimination of singles."
      The "single supplement" that tour operators and cruise lines charge often ranges from 15 percent to 100 percent more than the prices shown in travel ads.
      Larger cruise ships have few single cabins. The older ships have some single cabins, but double-occupancy is more cost-efficient for the cruise lines, says Lisa Herpolsheimer, an independent contractor travel agent with Ultra Travel.
      She says it's understandable that singles are charged more on cruises.
      "On the cruise line, they do have to clean the room whether there are one or two in the room," Herpolsheimer says. "If you think about it, it makes sense. You use the whole room."
      A single in a double-occupancy room means that, without a supplement, the cruise line would lose money. For a cruise costing $2,500 for two people, for example, a cruise line would only collect half of that for a single, unless it charged a single supplement.
      Princess Cruises, Herpolsheimer says, charges 160 percent to 200 percent more for singles. Regent and Carnival cruise lines charge from 150 percent to 200 percent more.
      Often, cruise lines will offer a share base, in which they pair up singles to lower the cost.
      Sam Stein, a Bostonian visiting Las Vegas last week, says he ran into the single supplement charge a few years ago when he went alone on a cruise to the Caribbean. Next time, he says, he's going with his girlfriend Diane Wallace, who is a secretary at a Boston insurance company.
      Hotels charge singles more as well. With single or double occupancy, singles may pay a straight room rate or they may have to pay 30 percent more, says Herpolsheimer, who has been a travel agent in Las Vegas for 25 years.
      Herpolsheimer says she understands that singles feel the travel industry doesn't treat them fairly. "But there are single tours and cruises where you can bunk with somebody else. It's a lot like a college dorm, but you never know who you'll bunk up with."
      Another form of discrimination some singles have experienced is the single diner syndrome, in which a single person is seated in a less desirable part of a restaurant -- perhaps near a swinging kitchen door -- and receives lousy service.
      Marya Charles Alexander, who edits a newsletter called Solo Dining Savvy, says being a single diner is a problem that business travelers, people without a date and married people whose spouses are out of town face. The problems of solo dining include being put at a table in a bad location, dealing with unwanted attention from fellow diners and the risk of appearing gauche by reading in a fancy eatery, Alexander says.
      Marlene Zuvich of the Nevada Restaurant Association, who is single, says her organization has not received complaints about discrimination against singles.
      "Some people don't feel comfortable going to a restaurant alone, but that's their problem," Zuvich says.
      Restaurants do often make the assumption that someone sitting alone at a table is merely waiting to be joined by someone else, and will ask the diner if that is the case, Zuvich says, but she doesn't see that as a problem.
      Singles endure other economic challenges as well.
      According to an article in the May 1996 issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, singles have the same financial challenges as couples, but less income. Naturally, two can live more cheaply than one because couples can share the cost of mortgages, groceries and utilities.
      And where mortgages are concerned, it can be more difficult for singles, especially younger singles, to buy a home, says Joe McLaughlin, a real estate agent with Jessie Emmett Realty.
      "Usually singles tend to be younger people and they don't have the down payment," McLaughlin says. "You'll often find that their credit isn't as good as it should be. Generally, they have to learn their lesson about (good) credit."
      Troy Copeland of Las Vegas knows all about being single and a potential home buyer. "When I tried to buy a house here," says the 34-year-old dealer, "they treated me like I had the plague or something. I could tell they weren't too thrilled to see a single person trying to get a mortgage. But I got a house because I had a job and the money for a down payment."
      There is a program used by lenders to get first-time home buyers into a home. The program is for buyers who have not bought a home in the past three years, and it requires a 3 percent down payment.
      The alleged discrimination isn't just economic.
      Singles in the business world sometimes are expected to work overtime on projects in order to meet deadlines, while married members of the staff are allowed to go home to their families at their usual clock-out time.
      Wallace, like some singles, feels she has been discriminated against in the workplace because she's single. "I once worked in an office where I had to work overtime but the married workers didn't. I thought that was unfair, but I couldn't complain. It was a job."
      University of Nevada, Las Vegas management professor John Kohl doesn't believe that happens often, though. Where singles do get the short end of the deal more frequently is in company benefits, he says. Benefit packages that include child-care facilities or child-care subsidies typically are more useful to married employees.
      "And if the company covers the whole family with health care" at one cost, instead of additional cost for each family member, that's a benefit that excludes singles, Kohl says.